An Iowan who’s serving in the Trump Administration after working on Trump’s 2016 campaign today said Iowans should trust Donald Trump’s negotiating skills. Sam Clovis, a former Morningside College economics profession, is urging farmers to “be calm” amid the angst over falling commodity prices and tariff threats.

“It’s hard. I know it’s hard, but I think they also need to be patient because he’s not going to sell the country down the river,” Clovis says. “He’s not.”

Clovis, a Republican candidate for the US Senate in 2014, joined the Trump campaign in August of 2015 and is now working in the USDA. Clovis suggested some headway already has been made in the trade dispute with China.

“We’ll pull out of this in good shape,” Clovis said. “Now there’s going to be some give and take. There always is, but we’re going to get a good deal because I have confidence in the guy making the deal. I do.”

“I am so tired of being dragged through a knothole by The Washington Post and The New York Times. In fact, I really feel slighted if I go a week without my name being mentioned prominently in something. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t play the Russian national anthem when I came up here,” Clovis said and the audience laughed.

Clovis did not use the term “witch hunt” in reference to the investigation into Russian meddling in the last election, but he did offer a strong defense of the president. Clovis, who testified before the grand jury, told Iowans this (Wednesday) morning he “was right in the middle” of recruiting many of the Trump campaign officials who’ve been the focus of attention.

“The surprising aspect of all this is — and I have to be careful what I say — is that when there’s nothing there folks, there’s nothing there,” Clovis said. “…It is stunning how incredibly convoluted that whole narrative has become and how totally inaccurate it has been presented in the press.”

Clovis said he’s not “bitter or resentful” about opposition to his nomination to be an undersecretary in the USDA. Clovis withdrew his name from consideration for the post last fall.

Clovis is spending much of a two-week vacation with his wife at their northwest home in Hinton, Iowa. Clovis joked with the central Iowa crowd this (Wednesday) morning that he’s lived out of a suitcase for four-and-a-half of the last five years.

Clovis answered questions from the audience about the “deep state” and the “bare knuckle fist fight” over the ethanol production mandate.

Governor Kim Reynolds today said she’s been assured by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture that the Trump Administration soon will announce a plan to “mitigate” farm losses connected to the trade dispute with China.

“I would think it’s forthcoming. I don’t know whether it’s tomorrow or the next day,” Reynolds told reporters during a midday news conference in her statehouse office. “I can just tell you they’re working on it and that the secretary’s assurance to me is that it can be done through U.S.D.A.”

“They both assured me that the U.S.D.A. has the authority to mitigate some of the market disruptions for our farmers,” Reynolds said, “and they wanted me to pass on that they appreciate that the farmers understand that something needs to be done to hold China accountable.”

As for what form that assistance might take, Reynolds told reporters administration officials are “working through the details” and weren’t “at liberty” to discuss whether it might be rival of a price support system or some other means of financial support for farmers.

“They’re working on an option for Iowa farmers,” Reynolds said. “They don’t want them to be a casualty in this trade dispute.”

Reynolds had an array of leaders from Iowa commodity groups join her for her weekly news conference. Iowa Soybean Association president Bill Shipley of Nodaway said farmers recognize there are “some legitimate issues” about Chinese theft of intellectual property and they hope the dispute can be resolved without targeting food.

“China’s proposal to add tariffs to soybeans adds to uncertainty US farmers face right now as we head into this planting season,” Shipley said. “…If allowed to take hold, it could jeopardize the ability of US farmers to do business in China for generations. Trade wars involving food are lose-lose.”

Iowa Pork Producers Association president Greg Hora of Fort Dodge told reporters “it’s too early to speculate” about the long-term impact trade negotiations between China and the U.S.

Sukup Manufacturing CFO Steve Sukup.

“Iowa pig farmers look forward to helping tackle the challenges or changes that we can impact in these difficult times and decisions,” Hora said, “with outcomes that we, hopefully, will all be proud of.”

Steve Sukup of Sukup Manufacturing in Sheffield said his company uses a million pounds of U.S.-made steel per week — and the price of that steel has gone up 40 percent. The prices for the company’s grain bins and other products have gone up about 20 percent. According to Sukup, about 83 percent of the steel used by U.S. manufacturers is made in the U.S.

“It was only like 17 percent of imported competition out there, so we didn’t really need to see steel be the ‘tip of the spear’ (in a trade war),” Sukup said.

Sukup, a former state legislator and Republican candidate for governor in 2002, told reporters there “hasn’t been a trade war the U.S. has won.”

Immigrant populations are starting to fall in rural labor markets, according to an Iowa State University study commissioned by the National Pork Producers Council.

ISU economist Chris Boessen, one of the study’s authors, says the pork industry is making gradual yet major shifts. “In the last couple of decades, the hog industry has changed dramatically from operations using a lot of family labor, sometimes paid, sometimes unpaid family labor,” Boessen says. “That’s more or less gone away as we’ve intensified and gone to more of a high-tech, capitol-intensive, more-concentrated production.”

Boessen says the study shows the labor market has changed in Iowa and across the region. “You have a lot of growth, a lot of hiring in the hog industry, it needs a lot of workers,” Boessen says, “but at the same time in the last few years, the labor market’s really tightened up from 10% unemployment in 2009 to 4% and really below 4% in a lot of the main hog states here, especially in the Midwest.” The change in U.S. immigration policy has contributed to a shortage of foreign ag workers, but Boessen says it’s more than just that.

“We’re moving into a period now where we’re going to worry less about a wave of immigrants and worry more about how we’re going to manage a workforce where we have fewer immigrants,” Boessen says. “The immigrants who are here are aging and retiring and there’s lots of things happening in other countries, immigrant-sending countries. People are getting better educations, better economies, more opportunities.” As conditions improve elsewhere, he says immigrants have less motivation to come to the U.S. NPPC officials say in addition to this study, data compiled by U.S.D.A.’s Economic Research Service shows a reduction in the foreign-born workforce prompted by a change in immigration policy would not be offset by native born workers and permanent residents.

The council is backing Congressional legislation calling for an H2C visa to allow non-seasonal foreign ag workers to stay in the U.S. for up to three years.

Iowa Farm Bureau president Craig Hill and former Iowa Pork Producers and NPPC president John Weber.

Two Iowa ag leaders say the impact of already-imposed tariffs and the threat of new ones will be felt in the agricultural sector for years, perhaps decades to come.

“We’re in limbo. This is a very bad time for agriculture,” Iowa Farm Bureau President Craig Hill said today during taping of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program.

Hill said “any potential for profit in 2018” was wiped out this week and it’s a “very scary” time for farmers — despite assurances from Trump Administration officials that this is just a negotiating phase.

“The cavalier comments that came from Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce when he said, ‘Even shooting wars end in neotiation.’…Shooting wars end in casualties and collateral damage,” Hill said. “Whether there’s a victory or defeat or settlement, we are in a trade war and trade wars don’t end well. They’re unpredictable.”

History shows a trade war led into World War II and the Great Depression, according to Hill.

“This is not a very good place to be,” Hill said. “…I’m a little bit taken aback by this attitude that’s come from the White House. It’s a very serious matter and Iowa is going to be the first casualty.”

John Weber, a former president of both the Iowa Pork Producers and the National Pork Producers Council, said China’s pork tariff is already on and the “day of reckoning” is here.

“These types of negotiations are long-term,” said Weber, who is also a guest on the IPTV program. “They’re not something that happens in a week or a day or a short period of time. It will take a long time to recover from the tariffs that are already implemented or already talked about and we are entirely dependent on trade in the state of Iowa and, as pork producers, in particular.”

Weber indicated young farmers are most vulnerable, financially, because they’ve borrowed money to get started in the business. Steel prices have already increased costs for farmers buying grain bins or putting up hog confinements.

“It seems to have been the practice of this administration to call people out on the table up front and then negotiate later,” Weber said. “Maybe that tactic will work, but, believe me, it’s a very uncomfortable time for those of us that are involved.”

President Trump has directed Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue to come up with way to shield farmers from the financial drag of these trade disputes, but Hill said that’s unlikely.

“The Farm Bill’s yet to be drafted…Congress doesn’t have the money to fix this,” Hill said. “…I don’t know how you make farmers feel better with a promise of some reward from government and it will be years before that happens.”

Both Weber and Hill say President Trump is still popular in farm country, partly due to regulatory decisions from the Trump Administration. The Iowa Farm Bureau’s president, though, warns “some minds may be changed” if this “cascade” of trade sanctions “gets completely out of control.”

Markets are reacting to the 25% tariff China imposed on U.S. pork today. Hog prices are down. Stock prices for Tyson Foods, the world’s second largest meat company, are taking a hit.

Republican Governor Kim Reynolds today said she’s an advocate for “free and fair trade” — but the tariffs President Trump imposed on Chinese steel and aluminum are having a negative impact on the Midwest.

“When I disagree with the president, I’m not afraid to step up,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said she’ll use any opportunity she can to encourage Trump and his governing team to resolve the impasse without elevating the dispute even further.

“There are issues with China, especially when it comes to intellectual property and tech transfer. We’ve let that escalate to the place that it shouldn’t. That also has an impact on our economy and on manufacturing, so we need to figure out a way to hold them accountable, but we need to make sure we don’t have unintended consequences by getting into a trade war,” Reynolds said. “Nobody wins in a trade war.”

China is a top destination for Iowa soybeans, but the Chinese did not include soybeans in the 128 products included in its tariff list.

Two people were severely burned in a propane explosion Friday on a farm in the southeast area of Plymouth County.

Hanna Monson lives at the residence. “About 7:15 I heard a giant explosion and the house shook and I stepped outside and a few minutes later there was smoke and fire,” Monson says. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened.

“The whole house shook and the property shook and I thought it was thunder at first — but it wasn’t,” Monson says. One hog barn was flattened by the propane explosion and others were destroyed by the fire. One employee of the hog operation was airlifted by Mercy Air Care helicopter and taken to Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, the other was transported to Mercy via the Remsen Ambulance.

One of the injured was air lifted to the hospital.

The Remsen, Kingsley, and Pierson Fire Departments all responded to the explosion. Kingsley Fire Chief Paul Huth says work crews were cleaning the barn on Thursday, which may have been a factor in the explosion.

He says one of the propane lines was power washed and that knocked rust off and that led to a leak that filled the room with propane. The workers opened the door, setting off the explosion. Huth says the two men were critically injured.

“One was burned and also had a possible head injury. The other one had compression from the explosion — his midsection,” Hut says. There were no hogs in the building that exploded, but there were some pigs in the other buildings. The names of the injured employees have not yet been released.

An official with the beef production plant, which became the first to ship beef to China when that market reopened last summer, says sales to the country are going well.

Jerry Wiggs is the senior director of export sales and marketing for Greater Omaha Packing Company. “Like any new market, it has its challenges,” Wiggs said. “However, if I do a comparison of where I was in the first eight months of, say, shipping to Europe, compared to where we are eight months into shipping beef to China, we are probably a 1,000-percent more…shipping into China than what we were into the European Union.”

Many cattle producers in southwest Iowa supply animals to the Omaha facility. According to Wiggs, there’s great potential for U.S. beef in China because of its growing middle class population.

“I’ve been to China now three times in the last six months and it is amazing the growth that is going (on) over there,” Wiggs said. Mexico is one of Greater Omaha Packing’s biggest customers. Wiggs claims the disputes over NAFTA and the border wall, so far, have not hurt their business with Mexico. One of the company’s fastest growing markets for beef, according to Wiggs, is the Middle East – especially Saudi Arabia.

“The beef into Saudi Arabia – it’s been legal to ship there for a while, but they put up some regulations that a lot of the packers…aren’t willing to jump through some of these hoops,” Wiggs said. “A lot of times we’re willing to do what, say, a major beef packer may not be willing to do.”

The Greater Omaha Packing Company processes around 2,300 head of cattle per day and employs over 1,000 people. The company ships beef to all 50 states and 70 countries around the world.

Republican Senator Joni Ernst late this afternoon said a “brush fire of retaliation” could erupt if President Trump doesn’t reconsider imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports — and Iowa’s economy will suffer.

“This threat of retaliation is a reality. History has shown that retaliatory tariffs are often targeted at agriculture,” Ernst said. “Our farmers are deeply fearful and I share their sentiment.”

For example, Ernst noted China is the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans and may choose to buy beans elsewhere after the tariffs take effect.

“With already low commodity prices, farms are barreling toward crisis. There are other countries that are ready, filling and able to fill the food product demands of China and other nations that seek to buy U.S. agricultural exports,” Ernst said. “Iowans cannot afford a trade war.”

Trump — over the objections of fellow Republicans like Ernst — signed an order this afternoon that will impose the tariffs later this month. Ernst released a video statement shortly afterwards.

“You cannot build a grain bin out of a paper bag or plow a field with a toothpick,” Ernst said. “You see, our farmers rely on steel and aluminum for the products and equipment that make farms work. Imported products like these are used to keep farm operations moving and making money.”

Ernst warned the tariffs will trigger higher prices on farm equipment and other product and “drastically increase the cost of doing business.” Ernst cited notable Iowa manufacturers like John Deere, Vermeer, Lennox and Des Moines Steel as companies that would be hit with higher production costs.

“As Iowans know, free and fair trade is not just a lofty Washington principle,” Ernst said in the video statement. “It is at the core of Iowa’s economy and sustains our families and farms.”

Ernst said she agreed with President Trump “on many things,” but she warned tariffs will prompt customers in other countries to buy elsewhere.

“I couldn’t agree more when the president has said that the U.S. should be its own boss when it comes to driving our trade policies, but America must understand its customers,” Ernst said. “…We simply cannot afford to be the over-priced boutique when the store down the street is selling the same goods at a discount price. We will lose every time.”

Ernst and the rest of Iowa’s congressional delegation sent Trump a letter Wednesday, pleading with the president not to take the action he took today.

A farmer and member of the Floyd County Supervisors testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee today and spoke against a change that would exempt large-scale livestock producers from penalties and from reporting hazardous air emissions.

Mark Kuhn says Iowa State University and the University of Iowa conducted a study on emissions from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) in 2001. “Based on an analysis of peer-reviewed, duplicated, legitimate and published scientific research, the consensus of the entire study group was that hydrogen sulfide and ammonia should be considered for regulatory action,” Kuhn says. He told the senators the Iowa Legislature approved and then Governor Tom Vilsack signed into law new livestock regulations in 2002 which gave the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) authority to develop air quality rules.

Kuhn says each time the air quality rules came forward, there was opposition. “In March 2004, the industry introduced through friendly legislators a bill to set air emission standards. The bill passed by the legislature, but was vetoed by Governor Vilsack,” Kuhn says. “In his veto message Vilsack stated the bill represented a significant step backwards because it would not have adequately protected the health of Iowans, and it would have set a standard so lenient that it would undermine the credibility of the CAFO industry.”

Kuhn says nothing has changed in Iowa since the air quality study was released 16 years ago — with two key exceptions — the number of CAFO’s has increased and hog production is set to also increase. “It is clear to me that the CAFO industry is opposed to any air emission regulation. It intends to continue business as usual as long as state elected officials in Iowa allow it,” Kuhn says.

He talked about Jeff and Gail Schwartzkopf who bought a house in the country near Rudd four years ago and how livestock operations built nearby “changed their lives forever.” “This isn’t a rural versus urban issue. It affects all Iowans. It pits neighbor versus neighbor. All too often, it pits farmer versus farmer,” Kuhn says. “Please be assured small family farms will not be affected by any air emission reporting requirements. The CAFO industry in Iowa is industrialized, factory farm agriculture.”

Kunn asked the Senators to keep the regulations in place “The Schwartzkopf family is surrounded by three large CAFOS. They should be protected from toxic air emissions that impact their health and diminish their quality of life. But Iowa lawmakers refuse to act,” Kuhn says. “So now it’s up to you to protect their access to air information.”

A cattle rancher and a representative of the chicken industry also testified in the hearing. They both asked that the livestock industry be exempt from the emissions requirements. Cattle ranch owner Todd Motenson said, ” I cannot support needless requirements that burden the agricultural community while providing no environmental or public health benefit.”

A day after resigning as Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture, Bill Northey took the oath of office for a federal job. Northey is now an Undersecretary in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue flew to Iowa to conduct the ceremony tonight at a previously scheduled ag leadership banquet on the state fairgrounds.

After the event, Perdue told reporters Northey will be in charge of organizing and consolidating some agencies within the U.S.D.A. — that includes the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Risk Management Agency.

“So we can have a one-stop shop for farmers where they can come in and get answers. Their databases need to coincide and work together, get our IT working and there are a lot of challenges out there and we’re going to do it,” Perdue said. “We’re both sooner-rather-than-later kind of people.”

Northey delivered a 15-minute speech at the banquet. He started with a thank you to Iowans who supported him and near the end Northey thanked his sister and her husband for taking over his farming operation near Spirit Lake.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be able to work for all of you at U.S.DA.,” Northey said, “…and to serve in a way that certainly magnifies or is an example of the support that you all have shown me through the years and certainly in the last four months.”

Bill Northey, Sonny Perdue and Kim Reynolds.

In early September, President Trump nominated Northey to be Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services. A committee in the U.S. Senate endorsed his nomination in October, but Texas Senator Ted Cruz held up a senate vote on Northey as leverage for changes in the federal ethanol production mandate. Perdue told the crowd Northey had “finally been liberated from the U.S. Senate” last week.

“In case you have any questions about it, Bill Northey, Sonny Perdue and Donald J. Trump stand for the (Renewable Fuels Standard), unequivocally,” Perdue said and the crowd gave that statement a standing ovation.

Perdue called Northey an “evangelist” about what’s working in Iowa agriculture and someone who has the “moxie to get things done” in the U.S.D.A.

“I frankly have been congratulated so much tonight over Bill Northey, I feel like I’m getting married,” Perdue quipped and the crowd laughed.

This was Perdue’s fourth visit to Iowa since he was sworn in as U.S. ag secretary last April. It’s his first since President Trump announced tariffs on steel imports and tweeted about winning a trade war. During a question-and-answer session with reporters, Perdue was asked how Iowa farmers who may be “spooked” by those developments should react.

“Pray,” Perdue responded, laughing. “…President Trump is a unique negotiator and sometimes he keeps people off-balance, even his own staff sometimes…He certainly did that this last week…He believes solely in his heart ‘America first’ and the American people first and that includes American agriculture.”

Perdue told reporters he and others are working “feverishly” with the president on trade issues. Perdue suggested Trump’s unconventional comments may have positioned the U.S. for a breakthrough in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.